The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's Ss (Classic Military History)

Rating:
Summary: An excellent overview
Review: This recounts the history of one of the most evil organizations ever created. Founded in 1925 as a bodyguard for Hitler, the SS ultimately became a security, military and bureaucratic behemoth whose influence pervaded the entire Nazi empire. Contrary to both contemporary propaganda and subsequent popular belief, however, neither the SS nor the Nazi regime were monolithic organizations devoted to exercising their leaders' directives. Indeed, a suggestive metaphor for the Nazi state would be that of a cancerous tumour, in which a collection of aggressively growing and constantly mutating cells maintains just enough cohesion to carry out its expansionist aims. The government consisted of a variety of departments whose ill-defined and overlapping responsibilities resulted in a permanent state of fractious feudalism. This arrangement suited Hitler perfectly. By pitting his subordinates against each other he maintained his position as the supreme and final authority.
The SS, for all its powers, was therefore still hemmed in by its rivals, of whom the most notable were the SA, the Party and the Wehrmacht. The rivalry with the SA was eventually settled in blood in the Roehm putsch of 1934, following which the SS gained primacy. But the rise of the SS would have been likely in any event by virtue of the Party's ascension to power. The SA had served its purpose: the regime no longer required an army of politicized street brawlers but rather a professional security apparatus.
The rivalries with the Party and the army were not so neatly resolved. Party administrators frustrated SS designs in the occupied regions - for example in Poland under Hans Frank - while Martin Bormann controlled access to the Fuehrer. The SS ambition to create its own statelet outside of Greater Germany was never realised. The Wehrmacht, meanwhile, maintained a long-standing opposition to the arming of Party organizations - both SA and SS alike - and initially inhibited the development of the Waffen SS. In the field of intelligence the SS organizations the Sicherheitsdienst and the Gestapo were frequently in conflict with each other and the military intelligence service, the Abwehr. This is apparently why the Stauffenberg circle, which almost succeeded in assassinating Hitler in 1944, escaped SS notice: its members were mostly in the military.
The Waffen SS eventually developed into a formidable fighting force. Based on storm trooper principles - which in fact had their origin in practices developed by front-line officers in the First World War - and which emphasized mobile, elite strike formations, and staffed by highly motivated and ideologically committed troops it was widely acknowledged as the best force on any side in the war. But its very success was self-limiting. Thrown into the harshest battles on the Eastern Front it took heavy casualties. At Rhzev in winter 1942, for instance, the SS regiment "Der Fuehrer" attacked and drove back a much larger Soviet force - reportedly in temperatures as low as minus 52 degrees Celsius. Of an original strength of 2,000, however, only 35 survived to claim the victory. The inability of the German population to provide enough manpower for a force which peaked at a strength of 900,000 led to the creation of what was in effect an SS foreign legion. While the earliest recruits came from sufficiently Nordic countries such as Holland and Norway, the numbers were eventually topped up by groups such as Soviet Muslims. Ultimately casualties, foreign recruitment and generally lowered levels of ideological fervour resulted in a dilution of Waffen SS strength.
The one area of supreme and unquestioned SS sovereignty was the world of the concentration camps. Minor impediments notwithstanding the SS was ultimately able to round up the large part of the Jewish population of the conquered territories. They were wiped out in the camps. Perhaps the most striking juxtaposition of Nazi petty legality and raw brutality is the bizarre story of the SS crackdown on improper behaviour by its own staff in the camps, in which hundreds of charges of corruption and even of "unlawful" killing of inmates were laid. Since these cases had to be properly documented, investigators were put in the absurd position of having to examine the precise circumstances of the isolated deaths of a handful of inmates in an environment where thousands were being killed "legitimately" every day. In the end, two hundred camp staff were themselves executed before the investigations were concluded.
Heinrich Himmler, the SS leader, was the stereotype of the Nazi functionary. A master bureaucrat, tenacious and obsessed with the minutiae of office politics, he was physically unprepossessing and far from the Aryan ideal. Nor did he approximate it any more closely in fighting spirit. He almost collapsed on one occasion when viewing the execution of Jewish prisoners. After a disastrous stint as a military commander in 1945 he feigned illness, reportedly cowering beneath the sheets when visited by General Guderian. As the inevitable outcome of the war became clear, he began to think increasingly about the prospects of surrender to the Western Allies. But such a plan would have entailed removing one major obstacle, namely Hitler, and this Himmler could not bring himself to do. In thrall to "the greatest brain of all times," Himmler - who clicked his heels when the Fuehrer spoke to him by telephone - was still dithering in early 1945. Finally, despite an admonition by finance minister von Krosigk that the Reichsfuehrer SS could not go running around in a false beard but must surrender openly, Himmler attempted to sneak through British lines in disguise. When detained he bit on a cyanide capsule, a coward to the (literally) bitter end.
The history of the SS is one of a fatal combination of arrogant brutality, overweening ideology and abysmal ignorance. Annihilated forever in 1945, it will continue to fascinate and appall readers for centuries to come.
This account is well-written and comprehensively researched, but somewhat difficult to follow because of its non-chronological approach. Given the vast scope of the topic, however, even such a sizeable volume as this can provide no more than an overview.